This course will wrestle with the mercurial and ever-evolving subject of Time-Based art. What is Time-Based art? Is it simply art with durational elements that unfold over the course of the work? Is it art that depends on time to define itself? Is it art that can only exist within the confines of regulated space? Is it art that stands firmly in the aftermath of what preceded it? Is it art that keeps time, wastes time, witnesses time, changes time, rearranges time, or records time? In this course, we will explore and welcome work being made under the broad umbrella of Time-Based work, such as: documentary photography, video art, experimental film, performance art, recorded happenings, social practice, and sculpture made with temporal dimensions. The course will operate as a studio course, with students being asked to present work for critique regularly, as well as weekly discussions of historical and contemporary investigations and demonstrations of Time-Based art.

Elective

This studio course is designed to help students slow down and become more contemplative with their photographic practice. This darkroom based course will give students ultimate compositional control as they learn to use the large format camera. Topics covered will include using the view camera's tilt, swing, shift and rise movements to control focus, perspective and image shape. Student will also learn film exposure techniques and advanced black and white printing controls. Later in the course students will be introduced to large format digital scanning and printing workflows.

Estimated Materials Cost: $150.00 - $500.00

Elective

This class explores form and space through the addition of dynamic light, with particular emphasis on the importance and weight that it holds within a photographic image. Students will investigate and answer the essential question: how does light serve an image? The course encourages critical examination of how artificial light is employed in fine art, documentary, commercial, and advertising photography to emphasize concepts, emotions or illustrate objects and space, placing a strong focus on contemporary works. Throughout the semester, students will gain the necessary skills to work in a professional photography studio, helping them build a strong foundation for greater control of their own projects. Additionally, the class covers the practical skills required for professional roles related to commercial photography, such as lighting technician, digital technician, art director, creative director, and studio management.

Active participation in live demonstrations, both in studio and on location will give students crucial hands-on experience. Starting with the basics, students will learn fundamental principles of light and grow confident in handling all types. Whether hard, soft, painterly, illustrative, high-key, low-key, gelled, natural, flash, and continuous, eliminate any fear of working with light when photographing people places or objects. By the end of the class, students will feel empowered and ready to keep learning about light, gaining a new confidence in approaching lighting challenges throughout their creative journey. 

Elective

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

In this course, students will be introduced to the basic principles of digitally capturing, processing, and printing photographs that are really worth making. We'll cover all the important functions that most digital cameras have in common and we'll go through the fundamentals of using Photoshop to refine and manipulate images. Students will learn their cameras' controls well enough to use the manual settings with confidence, and how to make the automatic features work for them instead of against them. We'll consider what makes a good photograph both technically and creatively, and we'll critique prints made on the Photo department's high-quality Epson printers. Students will need to provide their own digital camera with raw capture capability (DSLR or equivalent), and a portable hard drive (formatted for Mac), both of which they should bring to the first class. (Hard drives will be needed before week 2). Students registered for the course who are in the market for a new camera are welcome to contact the professor for camera purchasing advice.

Elective

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

The Graduate Seminar works in complement with Graduate Critique to provide a forum in which students assemble in discussion, analysis and reflection around a set of ideas, practices and histories that are of substantial relevance to photography, its history and its contemporary forms. The content of the seminar will vary from year to year, but students will be expected to read, research, discuss, write about and/or present on the material addressed in class. The seminar will interact with the department's Visiting Artist lecture series, with the SEI Lecture Series, and with MCM events at Brown. Attendance at those lectures is highly recommended.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

Intaglio: Alternative Practices builds bridges from experience in the medium of intaglio by presenting advanced and innovative platemaking and printing processes using copper, plexiglass, and polymer plate types. Coursework will cover topics such as: custom stop-outs, extended etches, ink interfacing, toner transfers, and extensions into the digital realm utilizing the Benson Hall “Tech Lab” resources. Demonstrations and assignments will focus on the virtues of plating material, not solely as printable matrices, or carriers of transferrable visual information, but also as finished objects. The semester will be driven by demonstration, guided in-class work, independent work focused on experimentation, and conversation geared toward alternatives to substrate (paper), matrix (copper, polymer, plexi), and medium (ink). The semester will culminate in a self-directed final project that requires students to generate a grouping of works that successfully combine a selection of the processes covered which includes a substantial set of proofs, studies, plating tests, and pertinent supplementary visual/technical research.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00

Elective

Performance and printmaking share qualities that can generate innovative and hybrid artistic forms, despite their seemingly unrelated disciplines. This intersection is increasingly seen in contemporary artistic practice but is not often explored in an academic context. This course will focus on the bridges and dynamic potential between theatrical performance, performance art, animation, and printmaking. Throughout the semester, students will learn conceptual and technical aspects of prints and printmaking that relate to and inform multimedia works, ranging from seriality, layering, and duration, to imprinting, documentation, and artifact. 

Students will be introduced to the relationship between prints, theater, and performance in the early- to late-20th century, and will examine recent works that define and explore critical issues of our time. Using RISD’s vast printmaking facilities, and equipment and materials for animation, sound, and performance, students will develop their own methods and combinations using topics such as the body, motion, and time.  

Course format will include lectures, readings, discussion groups, and visits to the RISD Museum’s collection. Students will develop three individual or collaborative studio projects in response to prompts, as well as a self-directed final assignment. Individual and group critiques will help sharpen students’ ideas, skills, and knowledge of prints.

Artists discussed during this course will include, but not be limited to, Marina Abramović, John Cage, David Hammons, William Kentridge, Kakyoung Lee, Poli Marichal, Jason Moran, Bruce Nauman, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Audra Wolowiec, and Yukinori Yanagi.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

This course is open to Junior, Senior, Fifth-year or Graduate Students. Email the instructor for permission to register.

Elective

This course offers basic black and white lithographic technical applications on lithostone and lithoplate to those students who are at the beginning level. Contemporary techniques, and technical short-cuts will elaborate on traditional processing. Experimentation is encouraged throughout the semester while emphasis is placed on the development of personally innovative imagery and concept. Informal group and individual critiques are conducted in conjunction with group mid-semester and final critiques. A professionally portfolio of assigned prints is due at the end of the course. This course may be repeated for credit.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

The use of light-based print processes is ubiquitous in contemporary printmaking. Light to Ink will lay a foundation of knowledge within the printmaking medium for using light as a part of the image-making process. The class is designed to introduce students to the basics of Printmaking using either hand made, digital or photo-made matrixes. The class will learn to make prints using the traditional print methods of intaglio, lithography and screenprint and build a base of information about the production of the film transparencies from which the matrix is made. Students will be taught the skills necessary to take the photo, computer, or handmade image from a one or a series of positive transparencies to a finished print. From Light to Ink is a starting point for growth and exploration in photo printmaking and an introduction to printing in intaglio, lithography and screenprint. No prior knowledge of printmaking is required. This class is most appropriate for sophomores, juniors and first semester seniors.

Elective

Students in the graduate printmaking program will utilize graduate level research and scholarship as an impetus for growth within studio practice. Investigation into historical cycles of printmaking will be fostered through assigned texts and exploration of primary resources available at RISD, especially The RISD Museum. A dialogue stemming from intensive studio work will be developed in varied formats by faculty, visiting artists and peers throughout the semester.

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

This is a seminar class for the senior printmaking student. The course addresses practical topics related to becoming a professional artist after graduation. Topics include:

1. professional content development as applied one’s CV, artist statement, website, and social media promotion.

2. class discussions about galleries, museums, graduate programs, auction houses, and grants.

3. examination of marketing channels for today’s artist.

4. introduction to business skills and professionalism as appropriate for the art world.

Professionals from related fields will be invited to the class to share their expertise and experience. 

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

Students in the graduate printmaking program will utilize graduate level research and scholarship as an impetus for growth within studio practice. Investigation into historical cycles of printmaking will be fostered through assigned texts and exploration of primary resources available at RISD, especially The RISD Museum. A dialogue stemming from intensive studio work will be developed in varied formats by faculty, visiting artists and peers throughout the semester.

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

This course will introduce students to contemporary letterpress printing. While keeping the broad historical role of letterpress printing in mind, the course will allow students to use the various incarnations of letterpress printing to further their own work. The focus of the course will be learning to print, and print well, how to troubleshoot on the Vandercook proof press, and exploring how the different approaches, processes, papers, and techniques effect and direct the finished work. The course will begin with an overview of letterpress printing history and its relation to the evolution of typography, and its major impact on, and reaction to, societal change. We will first focus on setting and printing from handset type, and more traditional image making techniques (read: Linocuts!), and then introduce digital images through the use of polymer plates. Once the basics of the process have been covered, the focus will be on students using the techniques and processes to further their own work, and the creation of a final project using any of the techniques as appropriate to the piece.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Make you own paper for printing or three-dimensional constructions in this hand on experimental studio course in making paper. Curriculum will include: paper specifications, basic sheet formation, Japanese Plant fibers, recycled materials, paper modules and screens, along with paper structures for installation based work.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $175.00

Elective

This course primarily involves the search for a personal, idiosyncratic visual statement. Juniors will refine technical application, engage in experimentation and study historical/contemporary artists and movements as the course progresses from scheduled project orientation to more independent bodies of work involving printmaking and its combinations with other mediums. Installation and presentation of work created will be analyzed as a critical component. This course will encompass oral discussion and presentations. Critiques will be frequent, in individual and group format including a group mid-term critique and end of semester critique that includes an invited, guest critic. In addition to the visual component of the course, instruction in seminar form will comprise visual artist professional practice methods that involve resume, cover letter, and employment application. Presentation of work in gallery, museum and professional interaction formats will also be part of the course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

This class will utilize relief as a means of developing personal imagery. Wood engraving, reduction and multi-block techniques shown. The responsibility of direction, and problem solving will shift to the student as initial assignments proceed into more independent projects. Individual critiques will occur throughout the term, at mid-term and final week.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Printmaking Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

This course provides the printmaking major the opportunity to work closely with Printmaking faculty on a concentrated and advanced basis beyond study in a print elective course. Focus on the development of printmaking related work prior to the Degree Project, relying primarily on individual and group critiques, will culminate in the Degree Project Proposal-foundation for both the Written Thesis and Degree Project body of work that is the focus of Spring Semester for senior printmakers.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

This course begins with Japanese moku-hanga techniques learning the fundamentals of water-based East Asian relief printmaking, including carving, printing with sumi inks, watercolors and rice paste. Students will be required to make exact editions using this technique as a way of ensuring mastery.

Pivoting at the mid-term, students will design their own relief print projects, using the techniques that most fit their aesthetic needs, whether those be from Eastern or Western traditions. Large scale prints and 3 dimensional prints will be encouraged, as will a wide range of woodblock printing techniques depending on the needs of each student—which might include chiaroscuro, reduction, multi-color printing, and digital processes such as laser cutting and experimenting with alternative substrates and unconventional materials.

Elective